Cutting Trees in Yosemite to Preserve View

[Ed Kelsey]

Sounds like a great idea to me.

[dsphotog]

If the trees are in the way, simply build a shooting platform on top of your car.

[Eric Woodbury]

I usually carry a small chainsaw in my bag for those errant trees. Sounds like I won't need it in Yosemite anymore. Maybe they could cut out a few ice cream stands and curio shops to the 100 year ago level, too.

[Drew Wiley]

About hundred years ago the place was possibly more developed than now. Previous
to being a public park it was a privately run park. Livestock grazed in the mdws too.
I've heard a few second-hand stories and have seen some tintypes. My babysitter as an infant was allegedly the first white woman in Yosemite. Since she was in her 90's
at the time, it's possibly a true story, especially if she visited the Valley as a little girl
prior to the gold rush. I heard the account from her daughter, who was herself elderly
when I was a child. Let's just say the Ahwanee Indians didn't wear anything at the time and still lived in bark huts. That much was obvious from both photos and the tales.

[Curt Palm]

I'd like to see wooly mammoths grazing in the meadow, and instead of just black bears
raiding picnic boxes, seeing tourists running from dire wolves, giant ground sloths, giant short-faced bears, and sabertooth cats. Remember your pepper spray!

you could just get those Mammoths:
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/17...tinct-mammoth/

[Bill Suderman]

Don't dispair, gents, just keep in mind (I almost said "focus on") the 3 million visitors spending 100 bucks in the park and probly several hundred before leaving Californy then look at the condition of your state coffers...

The NPS always looks at public access to park areas as "sacrificial" so, because the valley draws so many and has been so altered, let 'em do what needs doin' for the tourists, but leave the back country to me and my backpack. Que, no?

I've never had to hike far from the icons to be all alone. Just think about the Wally's World family...stand in front of the car with the Grand Canyon in the background...we've been here 10 minutes already, we gotta go if we are going to Crater Lake before dark...

[Drew Wiley]

Yosemite is one of the few parks, along with Yellowstone and Grand Canyon, which has so many visitors that it turns a high enough profit to benefit the entire Natl Park system. This factors into any plans to hypothetically make the Valley less developed or significantly limit access by motor vehicles. Some of the backcountry gets pretty
crowded too, but mostly out of Tuolumne Mdws. The southeast quadrant of the park
and northern boundary area offer plenty of solitude. I've done backpacks when I never
encountered another individual.

[Bill Burk]

The idea of cutting trees to improve 93 views sounds terrible to me.

[Tom J McDonald]

There is a house near where my grandmother used to live in Sydney, in the suburb of Rose Bay. Someone down the street poisoned a big, old tree which was growing outside their windows, so they could look at the lovely views of the bay. The tree died but stayed standing.

Well, the city Council came along and hung a big banner from it, on which it read: this tree has been illegally poisoned and will remain her as long as is safely possible... or something like that.